


nobody needed to know.

by obscurityofphylum



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Extra Ordinary, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus Hargreeves Needs Help, Klaus Hargreeves Whump, Vanya’s book, do not read if triggered, no beta we die like ben, v sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:06:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25154428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obscurityofphylum/pseuds/obscurityofphylum
Summary: vanya can’t bring herself to put everything in her book. especially not everything about klaus.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 199





	nobody needed to know.

_klaus had attempted suicide many times when we were younger,_ vanya wrote.

what she didn't write was the details. they were too personal. painful. she didn't like to think about them anymore.

despite her siblings being assholes, she didn't hate them. she didn't wish ill upon any of them. she didn't want to say anything klaus wouldn't have wanted her to.

she cracked her knuckles, sighing. it was dark out, and when she checked the clock on her oven, it was two in the morning. she needed a break.

vanya didn't remember any of the time between getting up from the typewriter and going to bed, the routine becoming autopilot. she always told herself that once she left the academy, she'd go on an adventure. a mission of her own, where she was the hero.

it never happened.

instead, she settled for a little flat downtown, taught music lessons, and was part of the city orchestra. between work and home, she did anything to occupy her time. to stop thinking about her siblings. many nights, she'd sit over the phone, debating ringing allison or diego. klaus never had a consistent phone number, so he was never a contendor for her misery.

this was one of those nights. she sat up in bed, pushing the quilt off of her and grabbing her phone. they were at the bottom of her contacts. out of sight, out of mind. she put the phone down and tried to roll over and go back to sleep.

it didn't take long for the thoughts to creep in. the rhythmic chanting of that word she hated, the word that had become her shadow. she was ordinary. nothing special.

when she was young, she fantasized about impressing her father. being more powerful than any of her siblings, being the one who saved the day. the memories of sitting on her bedroom floor in the mansion when she was a child, shaking with concentration as she stared at books, willing them to move. her vision would blur as tears welled up in her eyes, and she'd give up. no amount of anger could make her as useful as her siblings.

the therapy thing wasn't her choice. not really, anyway.

it was stupid. a couple years ago on her twenty-second birthday she had almost jumped off the roof of her building. her landlord grabbed her before she could jump, so she got admitted to the psychiatric hospital for a few days. reginald was all too familiar with the hospital because of the days of having klaus and ben as teenagers, but now vanya had her own apartment. his name was still on her medical files. he paid the bill and never talked to her about it.

from then on, she had to go to mandatory therapy. thankfully it was individual, and only once a week, but she grew to like it. she could talk about her siblings to somebody who was unbiased.

her therapist was a woman who looked a bit out of place for her job. she had long, wavy blonde hair and wore band tees and bell-bottoms. her lips were a bright red color, and her lipstick tube always sat on her desk. the shade was fire engine. that's one way to describe dr. malcofsky.

she told vanya that writing might help her organize her thoughts better, and that it might be beneficial to jot down some of her thoughts about her siblings that so often creeped into her head at night.

vanya took it a step further than that. here she was, at twenty-four, writing a book. it wasn't for the public, it was for her. so she could know. so she could be included when people spoke of the academy.

the street below her bedroom window was empty, spare a few cars. their headlights bounced off the window, casting bright yellow light in all directions. she winced, and slid out of bed.

once the window was open, there was no more reflections. just the pale illumination of streetlamps and shop-owners closing up for the night. her hands were shaking as she reached for the night table, opening the top drawer to reveal the orange pharmacy bottles.

she swallowed one of the pills, but didn't get back in bed just yet. her thoughts were going back to klaus.

his chapter of her book was nearly finished. she knew he most likely wouldn't be able to get his hands on it (she doubted he'd even be interested in books, no matter if it were about his childhood) so she wasn't nearly as pressed with carefully wording each detail as she was with allison's chapter before.

but, she kept some of it out. the bad things. the things she knew were to be kept behind the academy doors, even if they weren't left behind when klaus departed from their childhood home.

vanya wasn't tired anymore. she went back to her typewriter, avoiding the creaky floorboards as she settled back to the kitchen table.

the sentence she had left off at had taken a lot of rewrites. there were crumpled papers everywhere, and she was running out of ink.

_klaus had attempted suicide many times when we were younger._

her fingers rested on the keys, but she didn't know what else to put. memories were flying through her head. a particular scene had begun to play, and she lost herself in thought.

_“why didn't it work? it should've fucking worked!" klaus screamed, overtaken by heaving sobs. his eyes were red and puffy, contrasting his pale skin. vanya was watching from the doorway of the infirmary, eyes wide as she observed klaus. he was in one of the recovery beds in the infirmary that she commonly saw her siblings in after missions, except his wrists and ankles were strapped to his sides by restraint cuffs._

_she heard the commotion the night before but didn’t think it was her place (even in her own house) to be nosy or try to help. allison had told her after breakfast that klaus had tried again. what she meant by ‘tried again’ went without saying. when she walked by klaus’s bedroom on her way to the infirmary, there was a severed piece of rope hanging from the ceiling fan, and an upturned chair on the floor._

_"luther, please just, i'm not gonna run off i need you to just-" klaus begged, gulping for air that was blocked from his lungs by the panic. he was struggling hard, the straps chafing his skinny wrists. she was worried he was going to dislocate them._

_before luther could respond, his father walked in behind grace. she was in her nursing outfit, prepping a syringe, drawing out clear liquid from a small brown bottle. she flicked the bubbles from the needle, and he gave her a nod of approval. luther got up from the chair beside klaus’s bedside._

_"i'm sorry, klaus." luther said in the firm, low voice he used around reginald. there was no pity in his eyes when he turned. he didn’t see her in the doorway. klaus craned his neck to try and see luther, and vanya noticed the dark blue and purple bruises indenting his throat. grace mechanically reached for klaus’s arm, and klaus’s head swiveled to her and the syringe in her hand._

_“no, luther please come back-no, no-!" klaus screamed. luther didn't look back as he walked out of the infirmary. klaus was bawling, screeching and kicking at reginald and grace. as grace emptied the contents of the syringe into klaus’s arm, klaus’s screeches and yelling turned into sobs. they were heavy, full of pain and anger. he lunged back and nearly bit grace’s synthetic hand when she tried to brush klaus’s hair out of his face._

_within a few moments, klaus had stopped crying as hard. he hiccuped and sniffled, looking more childlike than ever. he had the same look of fear on his face as when he saw the ghosts as a child, and he suddenly looked eight again, shivering in the corner of his bedroom after nightmares. she’d always wanted to comfort him, to be useful to somebody, but ben and allison were much faster to his room and she knew deep down he was much more keen to them than her._

_grace was sitting on the edge of his bed, rubbing his arm soothingly. she was speaking softly, but vanya couldn’t hear her._

_“what the hell are you doing here?” luther asked. vanya didn’t know what to say. she opened her mouth to speak, but luther cut her off._

_“nevermind. don’t try to justify it. go back to your room before you make it worse than it already is.” luther spat. vanya’s jaw snapped shut with an audible click as luther walked away down the hall._

_with one last look at klaus, who was beginning to fall asleep with tear tracks down his cheeks, she retreated to her bedroom._

_the entire day, and that night, and the rest of her life, really, the image of klaus with deep gashes in his neck never left her mind._

when vanya’s flashback ended, her hands were shaking again over the typewriter keys. she counted to ten, breathed deeply, and rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands.

she tore the paper with the sentence off of the paper bar, crumpling it in her fists. there were tears pooling in her eyes when she threw it on the ground with the rest of the error pages, which had accumulated into a messy pile of scrunched-up paper on the floor. she went back to bed, the images of the infirmary fresh in her brain as if it had happened yesterday.

nobody needed to know.


End file.
